1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates color management information in a printing application environment and more specifically relates to improved generation and utilization of color management resources from color management information embedded within presentation objects in a printing application environment.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In a printing environment a printing system coupled to one or more attached host systems and/or associated servers may imprint information on a printable medium such as paper. The information to be imprinted may include textual information as well as graphical or image information. Collectively or individually, all such information may be referred to herein as “presentation objects” or as “data objects”. Additional received information specifically relating to color printing may be received. Meta-data objects may be associated with presentation objects to be printed such that the meta-data helps, for example, to standardize the desired color output. In one common approach, an International Color Consortium (ICC) profile may be supplied by the application that generates the print source data (the “presentation data”). In general the ICC profile defines standardized color parameters associated with the particular data to be presented and associated with the particular application or device that generated the initial presentation data. For example, digital cameras and scanning devices may digitize an image into any of several well-known encoding formats and may also generate a corresponding ICC profile representing the color parameters of the camera or scanning device. Using the ICC profile of the generating device or application, the printing system may then computationally map the parameters of the generating device into corresponding parameters for the printing device intended to present the corresponding textual or graphic information with the desired colors faithfully reproduced.
In many printing application environments, standard portions of information to be imprinted may be setup as an initial task prior to printing a print job or even prior to generating the print job. For example, a collection of images such as digital photographs, scanned images, graphical art (such as corporate or product logos), etc. may be initially defined and setup as reusable objects defined in an object library. When these objects include color information (e.g., color attributes applied to textual or graphical objects), an ICC profile may be supplied to define color parameters to permit accurate reproduction of the color when the object is eventually applied to a printing device for imprinting on a medium. In general, when a printing system uses an ICC profile regarding the color characteristics of a generating device or application, the printing system performs substantial computation to translate, transform, or convert the supplied color parameters into associated color parameters for the printing device. The computation and transformation associated with such color parameter information helps assure that the printing system produces the desired colors as accurately as possible in accordance with the standardized defined reference values.
In view of the substantial computations involved with transforming or converting such color parameter information (e.g., the ICC profile of the generating device for application), it is desirable and common to reduce or minimize duplicative computations for such transformations and conversions—especially if the same ICC profile is to be used in conjunction with multiple data objects. For example, the printing system may convert or transform the associated color parameters of the ICC profile into an appropriate format for later use by the printing system. More specifically, for example, when an Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) environment is provided with an ICC profile, the color parameter information of the ICC profile is converted into a corresponding AFP color conversion color management resource (a CMR or more specifically a “CC CMR”). In the AFP environment, a “link CMR” may also be pre-computed that incorporates color management information regarding the translation from an input device CMR (i.e., the device or application that generated a data object) into the color management information related to each specific printing device on which a print job may be presented. A link CMR is known in the AFP environment as an enhancement that pre-computes the conversion of color data from an identified input device into appropriate color information on a particular output device. Thus zero or more link CMRs may be precomputed for each identified input device to map the color information to one or more possible output devices (e.g., one or more identified printer systems or other presentation devices). Multiple data objects may reuse that same ICC profile and thus the same generated CMR structures may be reused to reduce computational loads when a print job is later processed using the stored data objects. Thus the ICC profile information is converted (translated or transformed) into a format that may be reused by an AFP printing device and that minimizes computational load on the printing device.
The pre-computed CMR objects (e.g., CC CMR and zero or more link CMRs) are also saved in the object library of an AFP environment for later reuse when printing a print job that references the converted ICC profile. In particular, for an AFP compliant printing system, data objects and ICC profile objects (as converted to CC and link CMRs) are stored in the object library of the AFP enterprise.
As presently practiced, the AFP resource installer (as well as similar object or resource installers or creators) processes data objects to be stored in the object library as a separate and distinct matter relative to the processing of an ICC profile. In other words, a user invokes the data object installer portion of the AFP resource installer (also referred to herein as a data object installer wizard) to install data objects. The user also separately invokes a CMR object installer portion of the AFP resource installer (also referred to herein as a CMR object installer wizard) to convert ICC profile objects into CMR objects and the install the CMR objects in the object library. The data object installer also interacts with the user to associate the installed CMR object with any related data objects in the object library. Typically, data objects and ICC profiles are received as separate objects provided by the user of the AFP resource installer modules. Thus, an ICC profile when separately received by an AFP printing system will be transformed into an appropriate CMR and stored for subsequent utilization. When presentation objects are provided by a user that reference an earlier provided ICC profile (now converted to a corresponding CMR object in the object library), the data object is processed by the data object installer in the object library.
In some situations, the ICC profile may be embedded within the data object to be presented. For example, in one common approach, a tagged image file format (TIFF) presentation object may be generated by a scanning device or digital camera (or any other suitable means or application program for generating a TIFF presentation object). The ICC profile for the device or application that generates the TIFF image may be embedded with the TIFF image data. Interactions with a user of the resource installer are less straightforward when a presentation object has embedded color parameter information (e.g., a TIFF presentation object with an embedded ICC profile). In present print setup applications such as the AFP resource installer, the user/operator is required to invoke a data object installer portion of the resource installer to install the TIFF image as a data object. The user must then manually extract or otherwise provide the ICC profile information to apply it as input to the manually invoked CMR installer portion of the resource installer. In other words, in current systems a first manual operation may be required of an operator to store a data object such as an image data object and a second manual operation is required of an operator to store color management information (e.g., the ICC profile as converted to the printing system's preferred format). The inconvenience and duplicative operations demanded of such a user may give rise to opportunities to introduce errors and/or may impose a further burden on a user/operator of the printing system
It is evident from the above discussion that improved methods and systems are required to reduce the burden on the operator/user of the print setup application and to thereby reduce the opportunity for human error in persistently storing a data object and associated color management information embedded in the data object.